Homage

WITH A LINE FROM PADGET POWELL

Where is my buffalo,
snuffling in the corner like a dog
gripped by the weirdness of good dreams?
Where is my borrowed car, where is my antique
brush chipped out of bone,
yellowed by time, useless,
where is my house built upon the sand?
A man with a buffalo would not need anything else.
Though his share of solitude might be vast.
And his store of cleaning supplies. His needle,
his strong thread for hemming his guts
back in, after being gored by unpredictable fate.
I think I've desired more than once
to run in herds away from murder
but here I am, complimenting the loveliness of my thumbs.
Here I am, drunk on utility,
when I daily declare a war on breakables
and neglect every fuse, every flange,
every socket, every ashed-out bulb.
That was my custody. My charge.
My scrappy dominion. Oh,
you say to me when I say to you, oh,
it does not matter, not here,
not now when we have our bodies,
and we have this darkness,
and then light like an anecdote,
oh, our little wealths spoken like sonnets, oh.